Tips for managing your time during the Summer break

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about the Summer break and how you can manage your time during this time, as well as put a plan together so you can rest a little!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

Don’t let the little things get to youBatch your content as much as possibleWhat is the bare minimum you can do right now? What do you HAVE to do? Is there anything you can defer or delegate?Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t achieve something!Book some time offOffer calls with clients on the same days so you are set up and focused on doing thatWe often think we have to be flexible all the time – but if you give people less option they will make it workIs there anything you can move back to free up your time?Think about when you work – we don’t have to just work 9-5! Look at where you can fit a few hours in maybe before the kids are up or when they go to bed.All of this depends on you and your own situation – you have to make it work for you and remove the pressureOffer child swaps with a friend so you get some hours to work without the kidsExplain to your children they are lucky their mum/dad work from home and they don’t have to go anywhere elseYou could also explain to your children that you need to work and would really appreciate a couple of hours undisturbed so you can get something done and then you will have time to spend with themIf you have a team – can they do more?Make sure you have some time for you as well as your family!Don’t be hard on yourself – you are doing an amazing job

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Don’t feel guilty! We run our businesses and have busy, full lives, we can’t put our business on hold or our family on hold. We can only do as much as we can.

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

An exciting event 01:28A plan for the Summer break 04:30Managing your time during the Summer 05:45

 

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

 

Listen to episode 200!

Friend Zone to Authority Island Event

 

Transcript below

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So last week was episode 200 little bit of a different one with me and my lovely husband. So you've not had chance to go and listen to that then please do go and do that. It's just a bit of a, like, ask me anything, some personal questions, some work questions, some funny questions. So, yeah, that was good fun, I enjoyed it. But like I said, something different for episode 200. Now time to get on with the next hundred episodes. So in this week's episode, it's going to be quite a quick one again, often with solo ones.

 

If you're new to the podcast, when it comes to a solo episode, uh, sometimes it can be a little bit off the cuff and sometimes, you know, they can be really well planned, but more often, a little bit off the cuff. And this week, I want to talk about the fact of some holidays and the summer break and what we're going to do and how we manage.

 

But before we talk about that. I want to tell you about an online event I'm doing. Now I'm very lucky that I get asked to do quite a lot of online events, which is great. And most of the time I'm not very organized enough to let you know on the podcast. But this time I made sure I was. So this event is called Friend Zone to Authority Island where sales and profits await.

 

Now the dates are

In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about the Summer break and how you can manage your time during this time, as well as put a plan together so you can rest a little!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

 

Don’t let the little things get to youBatch your content as much as possibleWhat is the bare minimum you can do right now? What do you HAVE to do? Is there anything you can defer or delegate?Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t achieve something!Book some time offOffer calls with clients on the same days so you are set up and focused on doing thatWe often think we have to be flexible all the time – but if you give people less option they will make it workIs there anything you can move back to free up your time?Think about when you work – we don’t have to just work 9-5! Look at where you can fit a few hours in maybe before the kids are up or when they go to bed.All of this depends on you and your own situation – you have to make it work for you and remove the pressureOffer child swaps with a friend so you get some hours to work without the kidsExplain to your children they are lucky their mum/dad work from home and they don’t have to go anywhere elseYou could also explain to your children that you need to work and would really appreciate a couple of hours undisturbed so you can get something done and then you will have time to spend with themIf you have a team – can they do more?Make sure you have some time for you as well as your family!Don’t be hard on yourself – you are doing an amazing job

 

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

 

Don’t feel guilty! We run our businesses and have busy, full lives, we can’t put our business on hold or our family on hold. We can only do as much as we can.

 

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

 

An exciting event 01:28A plan for the Summer break 04:30Managing your time during the Summer 05:45

 

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

 

Listen to episode 200!

Friend Zone to Authority Island Event

 

Transcript below

Hello and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How are you doing? So last week was episode 200 little bit of a different one with me and my lovely husband. So you've not had chance to go and listen to that then please do go and do that. It's just a bit of a, like, ask me anything, some personal questions, some work questions, some funny questions. So, yeah, that was good fun, I enjoyed it. But like I said, something different for episode 200. Now time to get on with the next hundred episodes. So in this week's episode, it's going to be quite a quick one again, often with solo ones.

 

If you're new to the podcast, when it comes to a solo episode, uh, sometimes it can be a little bit off the cuff and sometimes, you know, they can be really well planned, but more often, a little bit off the cuff. And this week, I want to talk about the fact of some holidays and the summer break and what we're going to do and how we manage.

 

But before we talk about that. I want to tell you about an online event I'm doing. Now I'm very lucky that I get asked to do quite a lot of online events, which is great. And most of the time I'm not very organized enough to let you know on the podcast. But this time I made sure I was. So this event is called Friend Zone to Authority Island where sales and profits await.

 

Now the dates are August the 17th to 19th. And it's basically 32 high achieving experts giving mini masterclasses, showing you how to position your business to standout. Attract the right clients, make money with products that run without you, no matter what state you're in or how long you've been doing it. Can you tell I'm reading this?

 

I'm a nightmare reading on it. Anyway, this online event, like I said, it brings together all those experts. And if you're wondering whether this event is for you and whether you should check it out. If you're tired of working around the clock and not seeing any profit or income, and you're ready to get some step by step blueprints. And I know obviously a new now me, all my stuff is step-by-step. If you're tired of listening to gurus, I give you all the pieces of the puzzle because they need you to do other stuff. Then this is for you. And if you're tired of struggling to get started, attracting your dream clients in your niche and you're searching for that one piece of information, single strategy that will make an impact on your business.

 

And you're ready to hear it. So, uh, it's really, really good for you. If those things are kind of resonating, so you can discover how you can easily stop being seen as a content creator and start being seen as the go-to expert in your niche. And I think like the Authority Island thing is really important because you've got to well, haven't got to be the authority or authority.

It's just, you want people to see you that way. I won't be able to work with me who think she knows what she's talking about. So I think that's really important. So it's a really nice online event, this one. I'm going to put my link in the show notes. So if you want to check that out then wherever you're listening to this, you'll find the show notes below and the link will be there.

 

So do go and check that out. Also, we're checking it out on my social media as well. So you might see it there. So there we go. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up about that online event. So this week let's talk about the summer holidays. Now, if you haven't got children, then don't panic. It doesn't mean that this isn't going to be prevalent to you or something you need to listen to.

 

But I really think it's important for us to get together a strategy or some, make some commitments to ourselves about what we're going to do in the holidays. Now we're obviously in it, in the thick of it already, my daughter broke up a number of weeks ago. Now, you know, cause I'm really honest about the stuff I share my daughter with my ex-husband.

 

So that immediately halves my holidays down, which is an absolute blessing. You don't have to say, I know it sounds awful. And I adore her and love her, but the idea that I get weeks where I get to focus, I know I am very lucky because of that. Uh, one of the upsides, sides of divorce. But obviously with the week she's here, I'm still juggling her and my stepson is here all the time. Dogs, family bla bla bla bla bla. So what are you going to do over these kind of six, eight weeks? Whatever it is that we've got left now. And even if you haven't got children who are off, it's summer. And we've been working our backsides off. I was talking about this the other day, being an online business.

 

And I know most of you have really similar as in not that you're an online business, but I know most of you during the holiday, sorry, during the holidays during COVID, didn't take time off didn't necessarily have furlough, didn't necessarily have the time off that maybe some others did. Um, Sorry. I'm just a, do not disturb my computer as always.

 

I always forget. And then you always hear a noise anyway. So lots of you have been working really, really hard. And summer generally is the time that we get to rest a little bit. And normally we get to go on holiday, but it's still very much in the air, depending on what part of the world you're in as to what holiday you can take, where you can go, that sort of thing.

 

So I want us to look at like, what are we going to be doing over the next few weeks? Not only if we've got children. And, or other commitments, parents, siblings, people we have to care for. But what are we going to do to make sure that we manage these next few weeks? So I've got a couple of ideas for you. I had some really good ideas from my membership because I did a talk on this.

 

We did a live on it to help them plan for the summer, and I got them to share their ideas. So one of the ideas, if you do have children, which I thought was really, really nice. One of my members said, "I'm not going to let the little things get to me." And I think that's really important. Now during the first lockdown and we had homeschooling, I, oh, I got myself into such a state.

 

Like I was really conscious about what my daughter was doing with school. I was getting really crossed when she wasn't doing what I thought she should have been doing. We were constantly in loggerheads. We were constantly having conversations about, you know, not trying hard enough, do this, do that. It was horrible for both of us.

 

So when it came to the second time of homeschooling, I just thought "You know what, I'm not going to be so hard on her or myself. I'm going to just let her crack on do what she needs to do. If she doesn't get it all done, then that's fine by me." Now, I'm not saying that's the most brilliant parenting tip in the world, but I'm just saying from my own and her mental health, I knew that I had to step back a bit.

 

So actually, when this member said that she's, you know, going to let the small things kind of slide a bit, I think that's so right. I think when they're at home and you're trying to work and you're trying to do the things. I know for sure me, I can find myself getting a bit het up about stuff. So I'm going to try really hard, not to let the little stuff, the niggly stuff get on my nerves.

 

I'm just going to let it go. From a work point of view, I'm going to try and do some of these things. So I batch content, you know that this week, actually, while she's not here, I'm going to be batching a lot of content, the podcast, email, social media, all those good things over the summer, as much as possible as I can.

 

And then I'm going to look at anything else like, so we do something called an Inspired Action in the academy, in my membership, where basically I ask people every week to do one thing for their business. It's normally small. It's not normally big and onerous. It might just be a reminder. It might be something new to try.

 

So I've batched all of them. So I've done all of them, right the way through to October already in that all scheduled. So what in your business, can you sit down and batch and you know, and I've talked about batching before, but doing the same activity all together, makes you much more efficient and it makes it much quicker.

 

So sit down, workout. What can you batch. Ask someone to take, oh God, I'm get to you, notes gone. Also want to sit with your child offer, you know, an hour or two send to grandma's, whatever it might be. If you can put them in front of a film and try and get that batching stuff done. So that's the first thing I'm going to do.

 

I'm going to batch stuff that where I can. The second thing I'm going to do is I am going to see what bare minimum I can do through this period. So what do I have to do in my business? What has to be me? And if you've got a team or a VA, what could be given to them? Like, what other things are you doing that you don't necessarily have to do?

 

What can you put off? What can you wait and think "Do you know what, I do need to do a new lead magnet, or I do need to change that thing on the website, but it doesn't have to be done right now. And I'm going to put it in my diary. Come the first week, when they're back at school, I'm going to have a list of things that I then am going to plan in that I'm not going to do in August."

 

Don't beat yourself up for trying to achieve something that you, you know, it's going to be tough to get done. So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to book some time off. I'm going to look at my diary and work out when I don't have any calls or the other thing I try and do with the batching thing is I do all my calls on the same day.

 

In fact, it just want to touch on this a minute. I had a member in the academy who was offering calls to her customers and she was like, "I've got one over here. I've got one over here. Got one over." And I'm like, that's, you know, that's really hard to dip in and out of those calls to have them all over your diary, why don't you just offer them on a couple of days?

 

And she's like, "Well, you know, some like I'm on the evening. So I'm like, I'm on the weekends." So I said, if you don't offer it, it makes them decide like, and if they come back to you and say, "Do you know what, thanks for those dates. But I really couldn't do with an evening one." I said, if you want to do it, then do it, but don't give it them as the choice to begin with.

 

So she took my advice and changed the Calendly, her setup. So what she was offering and basically sent out the email to all the people who need the calls, would those particular dates and only one person came back and went "Any chance you could do a different one." And she did, otherwise all of them booked in on the days that she chose.

 

So we often think, "Oh, well, I've got to be flexible. I've got to be like, yeah, anytime you want." No, not at all. You know, even with clients. And I know, obviously I'm in a different point in my business, but even when I have clients, it's like I try and batch them next to each other. So, so if I got a call at 10 o'clock one day and it was going to be for an hour, Then when someone asked me for call, I'd say to them, "How's 11 o'clock?" on that same day.

 

They don't know that I've got a whole day free the next day. And if it works for them, then great. If they come and they can't make it, then you know, you can work around that. But I always try and batch these things together. So I can't remember where I got to. Oh, that's it. So, so I'm looking at where I've got spaces in my diary.

 

So if I've got whole days where I've got nothing, I'm literally putting busy in there and that's going to be days where I can maybe take a day off. I've literally just booked some tickets to go and see the Lion King in London. I'm really excited about that with my daughter. So I've booked that in my diary.

 

Cause I had two spaces. I had two days consecutive or I had no calls, which is great. So that's the next thing. Look at what's in your diary. Look at what you've got coming up. Is there anything that you can push to September? Is there anything you can move to a day where you've got another call? Just ask the question.

 

If they say no, they say no. It's gotta be worth a chance. Right? So that's my other thing. I'm going to try and give myself some time off. Then the next thing is I'm going to be thinking about when I actually work. So who says we need to work between nine and five, Monday to Friday. If you have a partner that works in the week and is back on the weekends, that maybe they could have the children on the weekend, on the Saturday, go out for the day and you can use that day to work.

 

Some of my members said they get up early before the children. I mean, it's easy if your child is over kind of 10, 11 cause they'll be sleeping then. And then if they're a bit younger, that might be a bit difficult. Or when they go to bed that you do some work then, and you are present with them in the day. That all of this depends on you, your individual situation.

 

These are just some ideas. Like I said, I know I'm very lucky that my daughter only does a week with me and then a week with her dad and also she's 11. So now I can say to her "You know, go and look on your iPad or whatever." and not have to say that to her, by the way, I have to say, stop looking on your iPad or your phone so she can pretty, she's pretty good at entertaining herself.

 

Also, I am more than happy to have other children round. Only one more, by the way, I'm not inviting the whole, the whole class, like I'm happy for her to have a friend, because that generally means that she is busy doing something with them rather than coming in to me. Oh, and the other thing, one of my members suggested, which I thought was great was she does like a child swap.

 

So she might have their children on one day that week, and then they swap and they have her children. So that's a really nice idea too, if you are working or you have a business friend who has got children and you're all about the same age. Not you the children. So that's another couple of ideas, which I really liked.

 

And then the last thing I just want to mention, and like I said, this is going to be short and sweet because it was just a few ideas. And I wanted just to bring it up at this point. I'm not going to feel guilty. Okay. And I don't want you to either. We run our businesses. We have busy full lives. We can't put the business on hold for the summer.

 

Like we can't put our family on hold. So I don't want you to feel guilty. I don't want you to think when you're working, you're a terrible parent. And when you're being a parent you're a terrible business owner, because believe me, I felt that too many times and I promise you, it is not productive. It doesn't do anybody any good, especially you. So what I'm going to do, and I'm not going to let my daughter, I'm not gonna let my daughter make me feel guilty either. So when my daughter comes in and goes, "Mum can we do something?" And I'm working, I will say to her. You are very lucky that I worked from home. So that's the first thing you don't have to be put somewhere else, you know, carted off to your grandma's or whatever.

 

You're really lucky that you get to stay in your home. You get to get up late, you get to hang around and do your things in your house because I worked from home. And how lucky are you that that is the case? So also I have to work. This is a reality. I would love to come and play with you, but I do have to work.

 

So what I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to ask you to leave me alone for two, three hours, whatever it is you need from them. And again, it depends on their age, but I try and have a conversation and I literally would say, I'm going to shut my door and unless you're bleeding or something's on fire.

 

Then probably don't disturb me. She also, I'm also very lucky that because of the type of world I live in and work in, she knows if my door shut, she just doesn't disturb me. Now I might get texts, but at least she doesn't come walking in the door. And she has done that from a fairly young age, I would say because they're probably sometimes a bit better than we think.

 

So anyway, I will say this too, and I'll say, and if you can let me to work for these number of hours, then afterwards, I will then come and spend some time with you. But, like I said, I'm not going to feel guilty. I am happy that she gets to have her summer in her home and she's not putting some childcare thing, you know, which if she had to be, she'd have to be.

 

And I do it. You know, so I say that to it and I say, but therefore, you've...